Fiber optics cables are the basis for modern communication lines, they provide for transmission of data over great distances. To minimize losses, the cables are used in combination with signal amplifiers made of quartz glass and erbium – one of the rare-earth metals. However, such amplifiers have certain restrictions: they operate the signals of 1,550 nanometers length; but devices with much bigger range are required for working with big masses of data.
The scientists from the General Physics Institute and the Institute of Chemistry of High-Purity Substances attempted to circumvent such restrictions by replacing erbium for bismuth – a lustrous silverly metal with a tinge of pink capable of fluorescing in near infra-red spectrum covering the operational range of telecommunication lines.
The authors created a “core” of silicon dioxide (high-purity glass) and filled it with layers of phosphor-silicate glass and germanium-silicate glass with bismuth: in the first case it was a mixture of bismuth with silicon dioxide and phosphor, and in the second case – a mixture of bismuth with silicon dioxide and germanium. Then the scientists formed the tube with layers of glass into a glass rod: then they stretched the obtained structures into optical fiber guides, which became the basis for amplifiers.
At the testing stage the scientists ran the light-emitting diode laser radiation through the fiber optics cable equipped with a new amplifier. It turned out that the fiber optics cable with such amplifier is capable of transmitting 5 times more data per second vs the standard fiber optics cable.
“In future our main efforts will be focused on detailed studies of such amplifiers and respectively – on further improvement of the modern fiber optics cables performance. Our main focus will be on the practical application of such devices. We intend to create efficient lasers and amplifiers within a broad range of wave length, so they could be used in the new-generation communication networks”, – Russia Science Foundation is citing Andrey Umnikov, Candidate of chemical sciences.
